STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 9 Plant breeding for resistance to disease and climate change is the best tool that we have right now for fighting these problems that are coming at coffee. So the Timor Hybrid is a huge turning point in the history of coffee for giving us this new tool in the kit basically to help us survive into the future. STiR: Which cultivars or strains do you think are going to be important in the future? Chris Kornman: Going back to the Timor hybrid, we can see the way it's being employed in modern plant science. And these various plants are mostly being propagated as what they call F1 hybrids. F1 stands for first filial genera- tion. It means that we've got two distinct parent plants and the child population is uniform but unstable. They tend to be really powerful hybrids because they have a lot of the resistance that we like from the robusta side of the family tree, and the flavor tends to be really good. There are two big downsides to these F1 populations. The first is that they are expensive and hard to get a hold of and so that limits their availability to the average coffee farmer. The second is that I mentioned they're unstable. If you pair two identical F1s and try to get a population of F2 trees from them, they'll be non-uniform. You'll have a bunch of trees that exhibit recessive genetics from the various parent plants that weren't intended for the F1 generation. So you can't breed the plants on the farm. You have to keep going back and buying seedlings or seeds. This economically puts the most vulnerable farmers at the highest disadvantage, which is a tragedy. These F1s are extremely important for commercial at-scale cultivation, but I see some troubling trends in the way they're currently being distributed and sold. So, what's the answer? I don't know that I have one. I think that since the 50s in most countries and going back further in certain countries, we're seeing more and more country or region-based plant development that's not necessarily tied to some colonial hierarchy of science and distribution. I think that that's good to see. Kenya has done a really good job of this. The catch is that there are so many competing interests for new plants. Farmers want something that's produc- tive and will give them a good income. The exporters want something that ripens early or ripens uniformly so it's all ready to go and then coffee cuppers want something that's delicious and precious. Trying to find the middle ground in that can be really challenging. Ruiru 11 was a newly developed hybrid in Kenya that was extremely resistant and took into account cupper attributes like acidity and body but didn't account for sweetness. So we have this very tart, full-bodied coffee that doesn't have much balance as a result in a lot of cases. They had to basically disassemble the hybrid and reconstruct it. They created this new hybrid called Batian which is much better in the cup, but it's taking a long time to catch on because of how expensive the development was and how much time it takes. You know a 30-year time frame for new cultivar development is not uncom- mon. You have to go through all these field trials. You have to do multiple genera- tion selections, and then getting enough of the seed or the plant to distribute just takes so much time. So we're fighting against the clock really. STiR: Who's paying the scientists for all of this research and development? How does a small coffee farmer in El Salvador, for example, get access to these expensive new hybrids? Chris Kornman: That's right! Distribution and research need to be subsidized. It needs to be paid for by the people who are interested in the results and have the money to do so and that usually means consuming countries. One of the things that World Coffee Research has done a fairly good job of is getting the word out there that this stuff is happening. They're working with existing organizations basically to help guide and instruct. In some cases, I think that's good and in some cases maybe it's a little bit problematic. But ultimately they're raising awareness that we're dramatically underfund- ed in the ability to research and then also in the ability to effectively distribute. STiR: That brings us back to the purpose of your infographic. How do you envision the infographic being used in the future? Chris Kornman: I hope it gets people excited about the stuff that we're talking about. Whether it's a roaster who wasn't aware of some of the detailed intricacies of history and distribution becoming more aware. Whether it's a consumer who realizes that there are a lot of stories behind the coffees that they're drinking and enjoying or maybe it's a farmer who realizes that they've got this unique tree type and that gives them access to a more specialized market as a result. I think any of those would be great outcomes. I'm a big fan of the idea that the rising tide can raise all the ships. So if I can contribute to that, if I can help to get information out there that's accurate and verifiable and contextualized so that people have the tools to not just see it but understand it. I think that helps everybody in the industry. *Read the entire interview and more about the infographic from Royal Coffee online at www.stir-tea-coffee.com

• Cover